OAK­LAND—The city of Oak­land wants to emerge as the Brook­lyn to San Fran­cisco’s Man­hat­tan. It’s get­ting there. Thanks to a hip­ster ex­odus from more ex­pens­ive San Fran­cisco, Pa­lo Alto, and Sil­ic­on Val­ley, a lot of tat­tooed mil­len­ni­als are rid­ing around down­town Oak­land on fixed-gear bikes. The bar and res­taur­ant scene is tak­ing off. A massive fest­iv­al called Art Mur­mur draws thou­sands of people on the first Fri­day each month.

And yet re­tail­ers still largely struggle to sur­vive in Oak­land’s down­town. “There aren’t enough people here,” Bri­an Kend­all, pro­ject man­ager for the Oak­land Re­devel­op­ment Agency, ex­plained on a walk last month. Down­town is a ma­jor pro­fes­sion­al cen­ter fea­tur­ing Kais­er Per­man­ente’s re­gion­al of­fices, the seats of city and county gov­ern­ment, and mu­sic-stream­ing com­pany Pan­dora. But for much of its his­tory, it has been a com­muter cen­ter, with few res­id­en­tial or shop­ping op­por­tun­it­ies.

There’s not much foot traffic. Kend­all poin­ted out blocks where many ground-floor spaces are either va­cant or of­fices that turn shuttered blinds to the street. On Tele­graph Av­en­ue, a ma­jor thor­ough­fare, two new shoe boutiques rely on on­line sales for 30 to 50 per­cent of their rev­en­ues, he said. Mean­while, city of­fi­cials es­tim­ate that Oak­land res­id­ents spend $1 bil­lion each year shop­ping out­side Oak­land, of­ten tak­ing their wal­lets to neigh­bor­ing towns with already-flour­ish­ing shop­ping dis­tricts.

City hall, loc­al en­tre­pren­eurs, and a small busi­ness in­cub­at­or called Popu­p­hood see re­tail as the fi­nal stage of Oak­land’s urb­an re­viv­al. And they’re help­ing mer­chants with cre­at­ive solu­tions that could ap­ply to Main Streets and down­towns na­tion­wide.

Alf­onso Domin­guez knows how hard it is to sur­vive as a re­tail­er in down­town Oak­land. While his res­taur­ant in his­tor­ic Old Oak­land — an au­then­t­ic Mex­ic­an place he co-owns with his mom — sur­vived the 2008 re­ces­sion, his nearby den­im store and home-goods store did not. As Domin­guez watched the bad eco­nomy wipe out emer­ging busi­nesses, he wor­ried about the neigh­bor­hood’s fu­ture, and about de­creased foot traffic to his res­taur­ant.

So in 2011, Domin­guez teamed up with artist Sarah Fil­ley and ap­proached his land­lord with a new concept: in­stantly re­viv­ing a whole block in Old Oak­land by giv­ing five va­cant store­fronts to re­tail­ers for six months, rent-free. The goal was to lower the start-up costs of open­ing a store, and to help en­tre­pren­eurs ease in­to pay­ing full rent. By open­ing along­side oth­er res­taur­ants and boutiques, a store own­er also wouldn’t have to wait for oth­er re­tail out­lets to take a chance on the neigh­bor­hood. “You can’t ex­pect someone to go and set up shop in a trans­ition­al neigh­bor­hood and wait five years for it to come up around them,” Fil­ley says. Domin­guez and Fil­ley called the concept ‘Popu­p­hood,’ a word that’s now the name of their con­sult­ing com­pany.

“We didn’t feel like we were sac­ri­fi­cing much,” says Mar­tin Ward, as­set man­ager for the build­ing own­er, Peter Sul­li­van As­so­ci­ates. The com­pany had been try­ing to lease the spaces for years. Ward be­lieved that ac­tiv­at­ing ground-floor space with re­tail­ers would make the area more at­tract­ive to of­fice ten­ants.

Two years later, the store­fronts in Old Oak­land have hos­ted sev­en busi­nesses and a trav­el­ing art lib­rary, se­lec­ted by Domin­guez and Fil­ley from a pool of ap­plic­ants. They lean to­ward busi­nesses that sup­port or re­flect Oak­land’s cre­at­ive eco­nomy — such as a former gal­lery own­er who sells goods hand­made by Amer­ic­an artists, and a pair of Ja­pan­ese-Amer­ic­an life­style blog­gers whose store spe­cial­izes in im­por­ted bar­ware. Par­ti­cip­at­ing re­tail­ers meet monthly, share com­mun­al re­sources like Wi-Fi, and are ment­ored by Domin­guez and Fil­ley.

So far, two par­ti­cipants have gone on to sign leases in their Popu­p­hood spaces, and a third re­cently signed a lease at an­oth­er Old Oak­land loc­a­tion. Re­tail­ers that suc­ceed in the in­cub­at­or tend to have two qual­it­ies: they come in­to it with an ex­ist­ing on­line fol­low­ing or as a second loc­a­tion for an ex­ist­ing busi­ness, and they turn their stores in­to ex­per­i­ences. Crown Nine, a jew­el­er, hosts classes and makes cus­tom en­gage­ment rings. Um­ami Mart, the Ja­pan­ese pur­vey­or, hosts events like sake tast­ings. En­tre­pren­eurs that suc­ceed go bey­ond brick-and-mor­tar: they have on­line stores, whole­sale busi­nesses, blogs, and In­s­tagram ac­counts. They hustle like crazy.

A ven­ture like Popu­p­hood re­quires land­lords will­ing to take risks and hard­work­ing en­tre­pren­eurs. But re­tail­ers set­ting up shop in Oak­land have also be­nefited from state re­devel­op­ment funds for down­town façade and ten­ant im­prove­ments, man­aged by City Hall’s Kend­all. Such money has been stra­tegic­ally de­ployed in Oak­land for years to com­bat urb­an blight — not­ably in the 2000s, when then-May­or Jerry Brown spent lav­ishly to re­store the art deco Fox Theat­er and fin­ance new apart­ments. In 2012, now-Gov. Brown elim­in­ated the pro­gram, for­cing the city to ex­plore oth­er op­tions for help­ing en­tre­pren­eurs.

The City of Oak­land re­cently partnered with Kiva Zip, a crowd­fund­ing plat­form. The city will en­dorse loc­al busi­nesses on the site, with the hope that the stamp of ap­prov­al will help them at­tract more cap­it­al. The re­devel­op­ment agency has also taken a Popu­p­hood-style ap­proach to some down­town prop­erty it owns. That in­cludes Domin­guez and Fil­ley’s cur­rent of­fice space, which the city has offered them rent-free in ex­change for their en­tre­pren­eur-in­cub­a­tion work.

Popu­p­hood has sub­leased most of the space it gained from the city to HUB Oak­land, an or­gan­iz­a­tion that provides cowork­ing loc­a­tions throughout the city. What was once an empty bank branch is now hum­ming with en­tre­pren­eur­i­al activ­ity. Across the street, a store called Oak­land­ish prints T-shirts and oth­er gear em­blazoned with un­abashed Oak­land pride. And down the block, Awaken Cafe serves up lattes and avo­cado toast, and it’s of­ten so crowded with people work­ing on laptops that all the wall out­lets are taken.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are threatening to block the spending bill—and prevent the Senate from leaving town—"because it would not extend benefits for retired coal miners for a year or pay for their pension plans. The current version of the bill would extend health benefits for four months. ... Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Thursday afternoon moved to end debate on the continuing resolution to fund the government through April 28. But unless Senate Democrats relent, that vote cannot be held until Saturday at 1 a.m. at the earliest, one hour after the current funding measure expires."

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PARLIAMENT VOTED 234-56

South Korean President Impeached

1 hours ago

THE LATEST

The South Korean parliament voted on Friday morning to impeach President Park Geun-hye over charges of corruption, claiming she allowed undue influence to a close confidante of hers. Ms. Park is now suspended as president for 180 days. South Korea's Constitutional Court will hear the case and decide whether to uphold or overturn the impeachment.

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CLOSED FOR INAUGURAL ACTIVITIES

NPS: Women’s March Can’t Use Lincoln Memorial

1 hours ago

THE DETAILS

Participants in the women's march on Washington the day after inauguration won't have access to the Lincoln Memorial. The National Park Service has "filed documents securing large swaths of the national mall and Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial for the inauguration festivities. None of these spots will be open for protesters."

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2.1 PERCENT IN 2017

President Obama Boosts Civilian Federal Pay

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THE LATEST

President Obama on Thursday announced a pay raise for civilian federal employees of 2.1 percent come January 2017. He had said multiple times this year that salaries would go up 1.6 percent, so the Thursday announcement came as a surprise. The change was likely made to match the 2.1 percent increase in salary that members of the military will receive.

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SHUTDOWN LOOMING

House Approves Spending Bill

20 hours ago

BREAKING

The House has completed it's business for 2016 by passing a spending bill which will keep the government funded through April 28. The final vote tally was 326-96. The bill's standing in the Senate is a bit tenuous at the moment, as a trio of Democratic Senators have pledged to block the bill unless coal miners get a permanent extension on retirement and health benefits. The government runs out of money on Friday night.